This Texas-native computer scientist moved around a lot as a child. She talks about her family and her experiences in higher education, as well as why she chose to reach out to Aid Access. Her hope is that people become more compassionate towards one another’s experiences.
“I hope that my story and your project and other stories like this encourage people to be more patient and more permissive and kind to each other. People tend to look at their life and their perspectives and apply that to everybody else, but that’s not necessarily the case, so having the compassion to be like, ‘I don’t understand, but I don’t necessarily need to understand to champion your rights and to champion your happiness and your health.’”
ANNOTATIONS
Learn More: “Where Can I Buy Birth Control Pills & How Much Do They Cost?,” Planned Parenthood, accessed March 22, 2024.
Learn More [2]: “Insurance Coverage of Contraceptives,” Guttmacher Institute, September 1, 2023.
Learn More [3]: “State Requirements for Insurance Coverage of Contraceptives,” Kaiser Family Foundation (blog), May 1, 2022.
Learn More: “Intrauterine Device (IUD): Birth Control, Use & Side Effects,” Cleveland Clinic, accessed March 22, 2024.
Learn More [2]: “Levonorgestrel IUD: Uses & Side Effects,” Cleveland Clinic, accessed March 22, 2024.
Learn More [3]: “Insurance Coverage of Contraceptives,” Guttmacher Institute, September 1, 2023.
Learn More [4]: Ann Pietrangelo, “IUD vs. Pill: What to Know When Choosing,” Healthline, August 17, 2020.
Learn More: “Abortion,” Guttmacher Institute, March 19, 2024.
Learn More [2]: Nina Totenberg and Sarah McCammon, “Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade, Ending Right to Abortion Upheld for Decades,” NPR, June 24, 2022.
Learn More [3]: “Maternal Mortality Rate by State 2024,” World Population Review.
Learn More [4]: Doha Madani, “States with More Abortion Restrictions Have Higher Maternal and Infant Mortality, Report Finds,” NBC News, December 14, 2022.
Learn More [2]: Andrew Van Dam, “Why Have Millions of Americans Moved to These Countries Instead?,” Washington Post, December 23, 2022.
Learn More [3]: “How the U.S. Compares with the Rest of the World on Abortion Rights,” PBS NewsHour, July 1, 2022.
Learn More [4]: Preston Cooper, “America Spends More On College Than Virtually Any Other Country,” Forbes, September 22, 2019.
TRANSCRIPT
Interview conducted by Dan Swern
Interview Conducted Remotely
June 20, 2023
Transcription by Chrissy Briskin
Annotations by Patrick McPolin
00:00
Uh, today is Tuesday, June 20, ah, 11:06 am Eastern Time. My name is Dan Swern. I am conducting this oral history over zoom and I’m here interviewing–
[Redacted]
Full name please.
Oh, [Redacted].
Thank you, [Redacted]. Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me and share your story. Uh, whenever you’re ready, please feel free to just start from the very beginning.
Okay. Um, yeah this is sort of an open-ended thing, so I’m just gonna, I guess I am just gonna start at the beginning. So, um, I was born in [Redacted] Texas, um, I’m the oldest daughter of, uh, three. So I have a younger brother and then my sister is the youngest. Um, and I spent fifteen years bouncing around various cities in Texas, uh, moved around a lot as kids, um, before moving to North Carolina where I did high school and undergrad for college. Um, and then went to grad school. Graduated and now I do, um, basically research in, like, cyber security field, stuff like that. Um, yeah. Gosh this is really open-ended. (Sigh) Could you help me, like, have some direction?
Uh, yeah, uh, [Redacted], tell me about the adults in your life that were really formative for you.
Okay, um, my mom’s a superstar. Like, she is my role model in a lot of ways. She’s super, super strong. Um, she came to the United States when she was 20 from Israel, so she’s a Palestinian immigrant who came over and, uh, basically just wanted a better life for her kids. She didn’t like a lot of what her and her family had to deal with living in Israel and so she was hoping by leaving and coming to the United States, um, she would kind of save us from a lot of the political mistreatment of Palestinians, which I, you know, I suppose she did. But, um, she came here, and I think one of the, uh, first group of people she met who helped her, who really helped her, and who ended up becoming my godparents were, um, Egyptians who were also living in [Redacted], Texas. Um, there’s a surprising, surprisingly large population of Middle Eastern people in [Texas] for some reason. But so she stayed with them for a bit, and then I think they moved away and she stayed with another couple for a bit who were an American couple, and they were my unofficial grandparents, so I remember them as Grandma [Redacted] and Grandpa [Redacted]. We spent a lot of time at their house. Their house was supercool. They had some sort of like indoor water feature/plant feature that was so cool to me and I have never seen that anywhere else, in any of the homes I’ve ever been to. It was like an indoor kind of garden or, uh, like a Japanese water garden or stone garden or something. I think my Grandma [Redacted] put a lot of effort into that but they were cool. Um, sadly I’m sure they’ve passed by now. We moved around a lot. It was hard to keep up with people, especially for my mom. Um, I think she has kind of a fear of reaching out to people in her past and not getting a response, so she just doesn’t reach out. Um, but she came to the US with basically nothing but the clothes on her back. She had her family, the airline I think lost all of her luggage that she brought, and so her family had to mail her a bunch of stuff like money, clothes, stuff like that. Um, which she eventually did get, and I remember her telling me that my grandma did not trust, um, the Israeli post authorities or whoever was sending the mail to actually get mom anything valuable. So she bought her a bunch of like huge granny panties with these big elastic bands and she sewed rolls of money into the elastic band and sent them to my mom and didn’t say anything. And my Mom got these huge panties and she was like, “Why did you send these to me” over the phone.
05:02
And my grandma’s like, “Check the– check the waistband.” And so she checked and of course it was like, “Oh how many did I get?” So she was ripping up all these seams trying to see how much she actually got. It’s just a funny story my mom likes to tell. She came here, she worked as a nurse, I think she had a nursing degree from Israel. Um, so she came, she studied to certify in the US, worked as a nurse, married my dad, who was a police officer. I’m not sure how they met, there’s conflicting stories. Um, he likes to say that he met her when he was in– on dialysis in the hospital where she was working, and she likes to say that she met him in church that they both attended. They did both attend church, I just don’t know which one is actually correct. Um, but he, I remember he often worked nights, sometimes he would come back and sleep during the day. Um, and when he wasn’t working, he was playing a game called Delta Force, I wanna say. Um, and he wasn’t– so he was my best friend for like twenty-one years, but he wasn’t a very participatory parent. He kinda let my mom do all the work and, um, I remember there’d be a lot of times when Mom would come home and be like, “What did the kids eat?” And he was just like, “I don’t know.” And of course, at this point, we were like 9, 6, and 3, um, but this seemed to have been like a running issue in their marriage ‘cause when my brother was born, my mom told me she called her dad, my grandpa, uh, in tears panicking that she was pregnant with, um, my brother and she wasn’t going to be able to help, she wasn’t going to be able to raise him and raise me and work because her husband wasn’t contributing. And so, my grandpa was like why don’t you take your sister, like, you know, she doesn’t want to be here, she wants to go to the US, I’ll send her, she’ll stay with you, she’ll help you raise the kids, you go to work, um, and help her, you know, like, when she goes to school and things like that. So she agreed and my aunt came to live with us. Aunt [Redacted]. She is like a second mother to me. Um, she’s the kindest person I think I’ve ever known and she’s definitely my brother’s, like, almost-mom. (Laughter) Him and my aunt are still very, very close and I’m still very close to her, and her daughter I love, like, she is my favorite person in the world, my cousin. So she came and stayed with us and helped raise me and my brother. Apparently I was a terror to her. I don’t remember this. I believe all accounts, but I don’t remember being awful to her. I just remember that she’s awesome and kick ass. I can definitely see being a little hellion, though. Sorry [Redacted] (laughter). Um, so she was really impactful in my life, too. She’s very kind, I think is the main thing I took away from her, and patient, and my mom was really strong and determined. And then, um, the person my aunt eventually married, [Redacted], is like a second father to me. Um, he’s just, he’s so smart and analytical and he challenges the way that I think a lot of the time. He definitely did when I was younger and it can be frustrating how pedantic he is, but I think it also makes me a better researcher, better at critical– critically thinking about what it is that I’m kind of consuming or reading about or even writing, like, when I was, um, going to grad school and doing my dissertation or working on my thesis, I eventually left with my Master’s, um, a lot of the things, a lot of the papers that I published, a lot things that I was writing, it was in the back of my mind, like, what implications does this have? Is this something that I need to put more thought into, um, is this going to have implications that I don’t think about or consequences that I’m not thinking about? Um, one of which being, uh, we were working on a paper about stalkerware, which, so for stalkerware, it’s like an application that is on somebody’s phone that can basically monitor and track a bunch of information about them, uh, that somebody else will typically put on their phone or have them install. So like, Life 360, I know I think a lot of families use that to keep track of their kids and make sure they’re safe, but it can also be used in cases that are, um, less benevolent where you may have like a, uh, like a domestic conflict or an intimate partner violence where a partner will put that on somebody else’s phone just to make sure that you know, they know who they’re talking to, when they’re talking to them, where they are in the world, that kind of thing.
10:30
And, um, it was really hard to technically separate stalkerware from something that has a more benign use, but that does similar things like Google Maps. You can track somebody using Google Maps or Find My iPhone. When my mom and my father were getting a divorce, he used Find My iPhone to find her on the Parkway where she was getting information about a lawyer that she could use to get divorced. So even though Find My iPhone is really, really helpful that’s not the use case it was intended for. It can be used as stalkerware, so when we were writing the stalkerware paper, and I was thinking about how you can’t really technically separate these apps, but you might be able to, um, convince the, uh, I guess, the vendors responsible for handling these revenue streams for these apps like Visa or MasterCard, or Square or PayPal, um, you could talk to them and be like, “Hey, these are the apps and they’re using you to get their money and to pay– to have their consumers pay for, like, subscription services or anything like that. These go against your terms of service, you might want to, like, halt those revenue streams.” Um, that was one avenue we were considering, uh, talking about in the hopes of mitigating something like stalkerware. But then, uh, around that time, there was an issue with OnlyFans, and it’s sex workers, and the, uh, payment vendors who were basically saying like, “We don’t want to be affiliated with sex work, so we’re going to, um, basically drop support for OnlyFans,” I think was the thing. And so OnlyFans was going to impose some sort of like regulations or limitations on their site, which would have put a bunch of sex workers kind of, um, in the sink, kind of. And when that happened, we kinda sat down as a team, as a research team, and been like, you know, we know we’re trying to limit the effects of stalkerware, but it seems that, like, asking payment vendors or holding them responsible for something else might have unintended consequences, and maybe they shouldn’t have that sort of power, so we might need to think of something else. Um, and I guess I credit my Uncle [Redacted] with a lot of that whole, like, trying to see the implications of things that aren’t necessarily clear in the beginning. So he was really formative to my life and my brother’s life too. I know my brother has only good things to say about both our aunt and our uncle. But– and then, um, after, um, my mom divorced, after my parents divorced, several years later, just last year actually, she got remarried to a guy named [Redacted], who is awesome. He probably single-handedly raised my standards in the people that I date and what I look for in my romantic partners. Um, he’s just– he does what he says, he’s a lot of fun, um, he plans a lot of fun things for my mom who– he knows her well enough to know that she won’t plan anything fun for herself. Most of her trips are like, let’s go see the kids or let’s go help them move, or let’s go do this, let’s go do that, and he plans stuff just for them to enjoy, and she has been needing that for so long, so I’m really glad that he’s in her life. I’m really glad that he’s in our lives. Um, I called him yesterday for– to wish him a Happy Father’s Day. My weekend was a mess, and I had meant to call him Sunday, but I guess a day late is better than never. But apparently my sister made him muffins, so I’m glad for that. But yeah, so he’s– he’s kicking ass. Good job, [Redacted]. (Laughter). Yeah, um, there are others of course, there are teachers, who were formative in my life, other relatives, but those I think are the closest to me right now. Those are the ones I definitely think about.
15:15
Um, my brother and sister are also really impactful to me too. So being the oldest sister is (sighs), I think any oldest sibling would agree that it is a chore because, not only are you having to be responsible now for these younger siblings who will get into trouble and you will be responsible for it, you also kinda have to be a role model, a role model for them. So there’d be a lot of times when, you know, I was arguing with my brother and we were young kids, and my mom would pull me aside and be like, “You’re three years older than him. You have to act like it.” And I didn’t want to act like it, I just wanted to roll around in the mud with him and punch him. So there’s some resentment in having to be the oldest person to deal with the responsibility and to– to deal with being the first kid. Like, there are a lot of things that I wanted to do that was such a chore to kind of convince my mom to let me do, like, sleeping over at a friend’s house or eventually when I was older moving in with my boyfriend that my brother and sister just did. Like it was no problem. So, I like to credit myself with the fact that my mom just let them do it, easy peasy no pushback, but who knows? I don’t think they ever think about that sort of thing. But they do push me to be better. I try to be more honest, because I know they’re watching. I try to be more patient, I have– I can have a bit of a temper, which is something that– a trait that I share with my dad. And, I really try to be more patient and more communicative and just when I feel myself heating up I’m like, “I gotta clear the room, I gotta go, just cool down for a sec and we can rehash this when I’m back.” But it’s– it’s different. Siblings are, I don’t know, I’m very fortunate that I grew up with my best friends, essentially. I know me and my brother, we played video games a lot. We both still have a love of video games to this day and we miss playing video games together. In fact, um, he messaged me the other day saying, “Hey, we should find something to play.” So we’re gonna try. I was trying this weekend since it was Juneteenth and I had yesterday off which was nice, but, um, it’s just– it’s hard working a nine to five, and he’s going through a nursing program right now, so finding the time together has been difficult. And then my sister’s studying for the MCAT and she and I go through these moments where we’re really, really close or we’re just kinda siblings and we’re not necessarily antagonistic, but I think we have different interests, so she studying for the MCAT, um, my entire family basically is in medicine. I think I’m the only one in tech. Um, so I’m wishing her luck. She’s been studying for a while, I’m sure she’ll do fine. But yeah.
19:11
I’m trying to think of what other experiences were sort of formative growing up for me. I guess moving out and starting, well, even back further than that, moving around so much as a kid and growing up had definitely an impact on me. I’m not going to say it was difficult for me to make friends, but after a while it did become sort of a, like, why bother kind of thing. And it wasn’t like a resentful, you know, “Oh, I’m just not gonna make friends out of spite.” It was just kinda like, you know, “Yeah, these are classmates. These are people I talk to, but, like, I’m not gonna go hang out with them because I’ll just go home and read or play a video game or do something else.” Something that I can do on my own time that I enjoy doing that doesn’t have to be with another person to enjoy, because I had gotten used to those activities. Um, and I’d say I’m very used to being alone still to this day. I floated alone for a long time since, uh, since basically once I graduated undergrad I hadn’t had another roommate, um, but I think moving around a lot did have something to do with that. And now that like, you know I’m out of grad school, I have like a big girl job, I’ve been trying to put as many roots into the ground as I possible can, because I do want to have friends, I want to have a community around here, I want a place and a group of people around me to raise a family, to have a community to know my neighbors and know that, you know, somebody down the street maybe broke a hip and needs help moving her trash, or that I can go to somebody else for eggs and they can come over here for milk if they ever need it, like, that’s the sort of thing I long for and I want to cultivate. But it is difficult because I am such a homebody and I don’t like to leave the house, so I’ll leave the house for work and I’ll get home and I’ll be like, “Ah yes, this is my comfy little mess and I don’t want to do anything else.” Um, so moving around a lot definitely played a part, I think, in me being a more, uh, solitary creature? And enjoying that solitude, um, which I wouldn’t say is a bad thing, I did just have my boyfriend move in with me recently and I– I find myself in two minds about it. Like, I love spending time with him, I love it when he’s here, but it’s also very much like I realize little things build up that I would have the time to deal with if I weren’t spending every waking moment with him. Just simple things like, um, I have a cat scratcher that my cats like to use and so they get cardboard everywhere. So sometimes I’ll just go and sweep up the cardboard, but if I’m just hanging out with him and watching a movie, I don’t want to, like, leave and sweep up the cardboard in the middle of the movie, that kind of thing. Um, he’s away on a business trip for now, but, and he was last week so it’s like I am enjoying my time again, but I don’t want to get too comfortable being alone ‘cause I don’t want to resent the time that I don’t have when he’s here. So, that’s a balancing act for me. Um, and then so that was really formative, going to undergrad doing that was really formative. That was the first time that I had spent time away from my family, um, and, um, everyone had told me that college was really, really hard, and they weren’t wrong, but the reason I had assumed they were saying it was hard for academic reasons, and so basically my first two years I shut myself in my dorm and I studied all the time, and I had a great GPA for those first two years, which was awesome, but I didn’t really have a social life. Um, I remember after the first year I was talking to my roommate and I was asking, you know, like, “What are you thinking about next year, do you want to room together again, do you want to do this?” She was like, “Actually I found a group of friends that I’m going to room with and I’m really excited about it.” And I was really happy for her, but then it occurred to me that I don’t have anybody that I would necessarily room with. It would just be a roommate lottery again, which worked out well for me the first time, but– so after the first year, uh, I decided I was going to try and do some more social things. So I went to actual activities, actual events, and I was still studying pretty hard, but I did eventually find a group of women who were really cool to me. They were kind of from all over the US, all over the world, so I would go and spend time with them and, uh, learned that they are all in the same sorority. Like an engineering, professional sorority.
24:46
And I had no intentions at all of joining Greek life, um, but I remember hanging out with them being like, “Oh yeah, this is a cool group of friends.” And then learning they were in a sorority and being like, “Okay, well I can hang out with them and I don’t have to join the sorority.” And that was the intention, right? And so I just kept going to the events that they had and, um, uh, one of the last events that they had that semester wasn’t necessarily like a social event, it was like a, “Hey, if you’ve been hanging out and doing stuff. Come here and we’ll talk about things.” And I didn’t realize it was like a, I guess a pledge event. I don’t know if we ever called it pledging, so I went there and the person– the person responsible for recruitment was like, “Yeah, I think I’ve put about thirty hours into each of you for this kind of stuff.” And then I was like, “Well if she’s put that much effort into it, I can’t just walk away.” So I ended up joining a sorority, sort of out of guilt, but also, like, I think it was probably the best decision– one of the best decisions I made in college. I made friends with a bunch of women who were just far and away the coolest people I think I’ve ever talked to. Like, getting them in a room together hashing things out, our topics ranged from, like, all over the place. Yeah academics, but also life and what our dreams were, what our passions were, what frustrates us about some things that we have to deal with like, um, just double standards that we would see in our classrooms or with our professors. Um, we talked about sexuality, we talked about all sorts of stuff. We talked about, um, body issues like body image and body dysphoria and that kind of thing, which was really cool. And it was the first kind of time that I had had people like that to talk to about– to talk about that kind of stuff with I guess. Um, in a very open, very irreverent sort of like way. Um, there was just a lot of humor associated with it, which took out a lot of the taboo, I think. So being able to talk to a bunch of women about things like that that I had never been able to before was incredible to me. It was an incredible experience. Um, uh, I had always gravitated more towards guys in my friends, I guess I was sort of a tomboy as a kid, and so having an exclusive group of women to, like, talk with as a woman was just eye opening. And I– I– I wish it were so easy to find something like that again. I guess I could join a book club, but I’m not sure it would have the same vibe (laughter). But yeah, um, and then graduating from undergrad actually let me walk it back a little bit more. So the hard thing, yeah, undergrad was definitely challenging academically, especially in the later years, it took me five years to graduate with a computer science degree. Um, and part of that was because I switched away from aerospace engineering. Uh, but just the amount of stuff you’re expected to deal with as a young adult in addition to the crushing academics and courses and homework is insane. Um, and, uh, at some point just before I went to undergrad– so I’ve had bad anemia my whole life or basically since I started puberty. Um, and I would pass out basically every couple of months, um, since I was twelve years old. And it wasn’t until I was 19 that my mom finally took me to a doctor and was like, “Hey, what’s going on with her?” And he was like, “Well, she,” oh and that wasn’t even– it wasn’t even because I was passing out. I went to go donate blood and the person who took a pinprick of my finger was just like, “You are way too low to donate.” And she was like, “You know what, maybe the scanner’s wrong, let’s try the other finger.” So she pricked the other finger and she was measuring my hemoglobin count, which was very, very low. Hemoglobin, I think is like a, it’s how– I’m not a medical professional, my entire family is, I’m not. I believe it’s how much iron you have in your body to create blood cells? Or something like that? But anyway, after that point, I talked to my mom and she took me to a doctor, he did an actual full panel of blood work and said I was iron deficient. I didn’t have enough iron, I was losing blood every month to my period, and so he recommended that I start on birth control, which would reduce the amount of bleeding each month. So I started on birth control before I went to undergrad. And then in undergrad at the student pharmacy, basically, I would, um, get my prescription every month. And that is a pain in the ass. Because you are not allowed to get it a single day earlier than your prescription is going to run out. So every thirty days like clockwork you would have to go to the pharmacy and get your prescription refilled. And if you were going to be out of town, or something like that, you were kind of just out of luck. You would have to go back when you got back and get it and suffer through however many days off of the birth control that you didn’t have it for. A lot of places are not like that, North Carolina was. Um, and I hadn’t really thought about how inconvenient and how restrictive and how awful that was until I talked to friends who are like, um, in other states, who were like, “Yeah, I just let my doctor know that I’m going to out of town for a bit or I asked if I could get another prescription and I didn’t give a reason, they’ll just give me another month.” Um, and I’ve had friends who, like, stockpiled basically birth control just because they were able to. They had the flexibility and they needed it.
31:31
Um, so, uh, at some point in undergrad I decided that I was tired of the birth control pills, um, and I was tired of stressing out about having to take them at the right time, uh, having to get the prescription refilled, having to make sure I made it to the student pharmacy before they closed, things like that, and I eventually just got an IUD, which is amazing. Um, the IUD that I wanted was the Paragard. It lasts ten years, I couldn’t have it because it’s a heavy metal and those tend to make your periods, um, heavier I believe. And since my issue was that I was losing too much blood each month, we wanted to go with a hormonal one instead, basically that would make sure that basically if I had a period at all it would be very, very light. But they’re fantastic, I’m definitely an IUD evangelist. My doctors, I’ve had two so far. My doctors have been amazing, um, there was some mild to moderate cramping when I got the first one, uh, and the same with the second one, but, like, since then, they’ve been amazing. I haven’t really had to deal with my periods in years. Um, I feel a lot better, I feel a lot less stressed about it. Especially now with everything kind of going on in the US as far as, like, rolling back women’s birth control rights and things like that. So really glad I got those. Um, I know there are a lot of, like, horror stories online from women about, uh, IUDs that they really hurt to put in or they put them in poorly and they got hurt in some way, um, and the statistics are very, very, very low. The likelihood of actually getting an IUD, like complications with them, is very low. Not to dismiss any of those stories, it’s just I love mine, so I’m gonna shout it from the rooftops (laughter). So, um, moving on kind of from undergrad and into grad school. So in undergrad I sort of developed a pretty major, well, I’m not going to say I developed. I’ve always been, I guess, sort of a melancholy kid, um, probably starting in middle school and definitely through high school, but it wasn’t until I was in undergrad that I was actually being treated for depression. Um, and it wasn’t until grad school that I actually started really spiraling, because I wasn’t wanting treatment for depression. I didn’t believe I was depressed. I didn’t believe that even if I was depressed that I needed medication or needed treatment for it. So, I was really resistant to, um, trying to get better in a clinical sort of way if that makes sense. Um, so I went through the typical, like, pharmaceutical cocktail roulette of what’s going to make me feel better, what’s going to help me, uh, and what won’t.
35:09
And I was on, um, I think Wellbutrin for a while, which seemed to work okay, um, it wasn’t great, but, um, when I would tell my, uh, when I would tell my therapist, she was a– I always forget, like a nurse practitioner? No, she was a nurse who could write prescriptions and I always forget what the acronym for that is, but, um, she was great, and I talked to her about the Wellbutrin, I was like, “I think it’s helping but I’m not really sure.” And so she upped the dosage and so I had that dosage for a bit, and then I remember visiting my family for Christmas while I was taking this medication and everybody kept asking me if I was okay, which I didn’t necessarily recognize a change in my attitude or a change in my personality, but apparently everybody else did and they thought I was very reserved and not necessarily, um, like sad or anything, but just very reserved, very quiet, which is not the way I usually am with my family. So when I got back, I was just like, “Hey, this is, uh, something that my family noticed, it’s not something that I like, so could we, like, could I wean myself off of this, like, I’d like to try something else.” And she’s like, “Yeah of course.” But, um, after I got off the Wellbutrin I didn’t really want to try anything else, um, I tried a lot of different things and none of them were really right for me. Um, and I was exhausted by the process to be honest. So I didn’t want to try anything else again. Uh, stopped really going to therapy and it wasn’t necessarily because, like, you know, “Oh therapy fixed me. I don’t need it anymore.” Or because I was resistant to going, it was just I would go I would talk to my therapist and then she would set up my next appointment in the actual, um, session during the session at the end and then she was just like, “Oh you know the person at the front will set up your next session.” And so I would go out there, I would talk with them, they would set it up, and then, “Oh we’ll give you a call to set up your session.” And they would call me, and I would set it up, and then it kind of just fell off from there. And Covid did not help, so when Covid hit in March of 2020, uh, I was in grad school, I was in Florida, I had just gotten back from a trip with my boyfriend at the time, and I was very sick. I had pneumonia for the first time in my life, um, this was right before lockdown and I went into the student center and talked to the doctor and I was just like, “Hey, I feel awful.” And he was just like, “Yeah, you’ve got walking pneumonia, I bet.” And of course I lived alone, so I took myself to the clinic, so he gave me some antibiotics, he gave me, I think an inhaler that I ended up not really needing to use. I took the full course of antibiotics, felt better after about ten days, um, and then a few days after that I felt worse, like it had come back, and I went back to the clinic and they still didn’t have, they didn’t have Covid tests the first time I went, so he gave me antibiotics and was just like, “You weren’t in a Covid hotspot, so it’s probably not Covid.” I was like, “Cool.” Went back a second time, they had tests, um, the physician who was giving me the test, I still remember those very long Covid tests that felt like it was tickling the back of your throat, the under stem of your brain and your nose all at once, it was awful. Um, she was like, “Well it came back negative, so it’s probably just pneumonia, you probably just have to, like, live it out.” And I was like, “Okay, cool.” So, and then because I was so sick with pneumonia, my advisor had told me like, “Hey stay home, if you can work from home, great. If you can’t just rest up.” And then as I was recovering, we all went into lockdown because of Covid, so everybody got sent to work from home. And that probably did more to treat my depression than anything else in the world. Um, because I got to work from home, which I had never been able to do before. I got so much done at home and at work when, um, I would run something to compile on my computer and would have to wait for it, I could move the laundry from the washer to the dryer or I could empty the dishwasher or I could clean out the cat box. Um, so little things like that that you don’t necessarily think of when you’re at work, maybe at work you’ll just lean back in your chair and chat with a coworker, um, while you’re waiting for something to finish, but being able to do that at home and having that flexibility to work from home was a game changer for me. And then being able to start gardening as well, because now that I was working from home and I wasn’t basically working in the lab and working at home, I had a lot more time to do things and to indulge in hobbies that I hadn’t really given myself the time for before. Like gardening.
40:50
So I ordered some herbs from a farm in California and dug a small plot in my backyard that I was lucky enough to have as a grad student. I just planted some herbs and mint, um, some flowers that I liked, lavender which immediately died, but I’m much better about growing things now. Um, and now I actually have a bunch of plants in my apartment. I don’t know if you can see them really, but like I have a plant shelf here and then I’ve got a whole other shelf over there, so I don’t have a backyard, but I’m still keeping the growing tradition going in my house. Um, being out in the sun, being active, gardening is really active and also really helped my depression. You live in the Sunshine State and then you spend most of it indoors. (Laughter) That’s the truth of Florida. Uh, but that helped a lot a lot. And then, um, at some point, uh, I had my boyfriend move in with me, we moved in together, um, which was great. Uh, he was going through his own, um, his own struggles with depression and addiction at the time, but he was always really easy to talk to. I remember like one of the main things that I took away from our relationship that had me grow as a person in a relationship with him was the ability to communicate so well, ‘cause it was always really easy to talk to him and tell him anything. We were a team, so whenever there would be an issue between us, or an issue that would come up that we could have together, we would do that. And even though things didn’t work out between us, we just wanted different things out of life, we’re still very good friends, we still talk pretty regularly, he just bought a house, so I’m really excited for him about that. He knows that my boyfriend here just moved in with me, so he’s excited for me about that. I still have his dress shoes, actually, that I’ve been meaning to mail back to him, that I need to, and he mailed me the dock for my Switch that he accidentally took when he moved out, so, he’s a good guy. But it was nice having him there in Florida ‘cause, um, initially he lived in South Carolina, his job also transitioned to work from home during Covid, and after Covid they were like, “We’re just gonna stick with work from home.” So he was able to come and move in with me. So that was really nice and he got to meet a lot of my friends in Florida. Um, mostly, uh, there was this girl, this woman in Florida who worked in my lab that I hadn’t actually met in my lab, I had met her in a conference in San Francisco of all places. Even though we worked together, we never saw each other, um, and then it turns out, she moved to my neighborhood, so she was awesome, her name is [Redacted], she’s like the extravert who adopts introverts, and I was one of the introverts she adopted, and so I got to make friends with her and a bunch of her friends, and we remained friends until I left basically grad school, until I graduated. Um, and every now and then I’ll see them when I go back to visit. But her and my boyfriend really hit it off and they were great, and then she basically eloped with her girlfriend to Arizona and abandoned all of us so, wherever you are in the world [Redacted], I hope you’re still having fun, but she was great, and then graduated from grad school with my master’s and went to go find a real, a big girl job, and I knew that working from home was kind of a non-negotiable for me, but because I had spent so long trying to get my PhD, um, there was a recruiter who cold-called me from [Redacted] and was like, “Hey if you come work for this, uh, part of the university, you can finish up your PhD with the university, they have a program for that.” And, um, even though I– even though it was onsite work and in person and not work from home at all, uh, the ability to get a PhD in cyber security from [Redacted] was way too good of an opportunity for me to pass up.
45:24
So now I’m here in [Pennsylvania] doing my best. But yeah, um, I don’t know I feel like I’ve kind of just rambled on for a bit. Was there anything, was there anything specific that you wanted to ask or– direct me to?
I’m curious, um, if you can talk a little bit about your relationship to your mom’s family and culture and what relationship you have with that now.
Yeah, yeah for sure. So my mom’s family is great. Unfortunately, I don’t talk with a whole lot of them, well, I really don’t talk to any of them regularly. It’s mostly just I talk to them and I see them when I go, when I physically go there. Um, we’re in a family group chat but all of their messages are in Arabic, which I don’t speak or read. I am learning, but it’s a slow process. Especially when I don’t really have people here to talk to. Uh, I could try to talk with my mom or my aunt, who live here but unfortunately, uh, they don’t, well they’ve lived in the US for so long and they’ve pretty much just spoken English for so long, both their husbands are American. They’ve lost a lot of practice, I guess. It’s– language is definitely one of those things, if you don’t use it, you lose it. Um, so we end up invariably slipping back to English as my family when I go visit them, they’ll try to start off speaking in English so we can all, you know, participate, and then slip immediately back into Arabic. But, um, every time I go see them, it’s really nice, um, speaking to my cousins is probably the best because they all speak English pretty well. I want to say because of the internet, um, they’re able to use it just more frequently in their daily life, so it’s easy for me to communicate with them. Uh, my cousin [Redacted] is the person definitely that I talk to the most and the most regularly. She’s awesome. Uh, she used to live in Baltimore here, and so I saw her as a kid growing up, and then her family moved back to Israel. Um, and now whenever I go over there, she’s one of the people I have to go and visit and stay with, and talk with, and meet her friends, go out to eat with, that kind of thing. Um, but they’re awesome. They’re also kind of– so my family in Israel is huge. My mom was one of sixteen children, and I think she was a middle-ish child, I guess. Um, so there were eleven girls and five boys. So definitely skewed towards the women in the family, and to hear my mom tell it, it’s always kind of been like that. Her mom was very, very strong, her grandmother was very, very strong. All of her sisters were very, very strong. Um, they’re all college educated. They all at least have a Bachelor’s degree, most of them have a Master’s, some have a PhD, I think. Um, actually I think my cousin was the first person in the family to get a PhD in chemical– in chemistry– chemical engineering, something chemistry. Biochemistry I think it was. Um, so they’re all incredibly intelligent, incredibly brilliant, very funny, very assertive women, um, and it’s– to talk about the women in my family outside of my family, especially to Americans, when they hear that my family is Palestinian, they sort of come to, um, an idea of what a Middle Eastern woman is like and my family is not necessarily like that. They’re not really religious. They don’t wear a hijab or a head scarf or anything like that, um, in fact when my Uncle [Redacted] was getting remarried, he married a woman who wore a headscarf, and that was like a topic of conversation among my family.
50:07
Not a bad one, they were just kind of like, “Oh she’s religious, is she gonna get along with us? We’re not.” That kind of thing. So my family is– is Muslim secular in a way that most of America is Christian secular. Like a lot of people are atheists and still celebrate Christmas because it’s an excuse to get with family and get presents and give gifts, like, you eat good food, you spend it with the people you love, what’s not to love? Similar to how they kind of spend Ramadan, it's a time to gather with family and to eat after night, um, and spend the rest– the day like it’s a dieting or fasting exercise. Um, and they’re awesome. That’s not to say they’re completely progressive, I know when my mom was getting divorced with my dad, she didn’t want to tell my Godparents, who are Egyptian, that she was divorcing him. Um, because I think that their metric for a good husband was just one who didn’t hit you, um, and she definitely didn’t want to tell her family that she was getting remarried, but, um, obviously she did, because we went over there with her new husband and everybody got to meet him, and he had so much fun over there, and they all had so much fun with him, and he was dancing and clapping and singing and all of the things that you just do at, like, a Palestinian family gathering. There’s a lot of eating, there’s a lot of dancing. Um, and he had a blast. He– it’s the kind of thing where like I can definitely see, like, even for me who is part of the family and, like, has interacted with the family multiple times, like, going over there dancing with them, like, they’re kind of a bunch of strangers even though they’re your family, it’s intimidating and he was a champion about it. So, um, they seemed to really like him, he seemed to really like them, which is good. So even though I think they can be conservative in some ways about, like, remarrying, um, it doesn’t seem like it actually affects them that much. I don’t know them that well, so I can’t actually speak to all of their different opinions. I know some of my aunts are more conservative than others and some of them are more progressive than others. Um, and then my mom could probably tell you, like, how you know, this person thinks this, or this person doesn’t think I should have done this, or this person says, “Who cares what these people think, just do your thing.” But I can’t, um, at least not accurately and I’d rather not throw somebody into a pool they don’t belong in. (Laughter) But that’s my family back home. Um, visiting back home is a– is a– sometimes a nightmare just to get in the country. Um, ‘cause as an American Palestinian, Israel does not want me visiting and they definitely don’t want me moving back. Um, so whenever I go and visit, um, they’ll usually keep me a few hours extra at the border crossings, um, so border control in Israel, in Tel Aviv, when I flew in for several hours and then, uh, this last time when I went with my mom and, um, my stepdad for them to meet her new husband, we went to a resort in Egypt, and then on the way back I got detained again because I was the only American Palestinian. My stepdad, [Redacted], American, they just let him pass. My mom who is Israeli-Palestinian, they just let pass. I was the only one who got stopped, and then I had told my mom before that I kept getting stopped by Israel and she was like, “It’s because of this, it’s because of that, it’s because you have a bad attitude, it’s because you’re not polite, blah, blah, blah.” And this time going past, like, I’m always very polite, I’m always very patient, I’m always very understanding. This time, yeah, I was frustrated that they took my passport and they lied about there not being a problem or not telling us what was going on, just holding me there forever, but I was polite and this was like my third time, right? So I was like, “Yeah whatever, this is kind of just routine at this point for me.” And my mom is the one who goes off like a firecracker and is causing, you know, a scene and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and she’s telling me I’m the one who’s not polite enough. Look, okay, this is my mother.
55:10
But yeah. It is worth it to go see them, but I wish Israel weren’t quite such a pain in the ass when it came to how they treat Palestinian people. Um, yeah, so let’s see, okay. Um, I’m not really sure where to go from here I think.
One question I had was just understanding a little bit more about why your family moved around a bunch when you were a kid and how that impacted your ability to make relationships.
Okay, yeah. So I’m not necessarily certain why my mom moved around so much. Um, why she moved us around so much, uh, I think it was because she didn’t want to get complacent anywhere that she was. I know she moved from Israel to the US because she wanted a better life for her family. She moved from [Redacted] to [Redacted] to get a Masters in anesthesia, so she’s a nurse anesthetist now, and she went through a Masters program with three young kids by herself while my dad still stayed in [Redacted] working, um, as the sheriff’s deputy. And after that, after she finished her Master’s program, um, my dad moved back with us and we moved again in Texas, so that I think he could find a place to work and a police department that was a little bit closer since he could no longer work as a sheriff’s deputy I believe, or I’m not sure what the story was with that, I don’t think they had any openings at the sheriff’s office or maybe the police department was closer, I’m not sure. I know he was trying to avoid having to go to a police department that had or required him to go through an academy because he’d been a sheriff’s deputy for, like, ever, so he didn’t want to have to go do a training that he didn’t need to do, or he thought he didn’t need to do. And then, uh, I think she moved us out of Texas because either she wanted a change in perspective or she was looking for a better job or something like that, but I know that for me, as a kid, Texas was awesome, like as a child and then, um, growing up, getting a little bit older, kind of going through puberty and now going back as an adult, Texas is awful for a woman. So I’m glad she did move us out, um, and being in North Carolina was– was really, really cool because I had gotten used to, like, the flatness, to trees being used as landmarks to, you know, huge rolling thunderstorms and tornado sirens and grabbing Schlotzsky’s before the storm hit, that kind of thing, but North Carolina was mountains and trees and it felt a bit claustrophobic at first, ‘cause you couldn’t see the sky, but then you got so used to the greenery and growing things and actual seasons that– and fall in North Carolina is beautiful. And definitely changes in perspective as well as changes in seasons. I remember being very, very conservative growing up, um, definitely following in my dad’s footsteps there, he was very conservative as well, and then moving to North Carolina having a lot of those ideas and a lot of those, um, perspectives challenged by everybody around me. Not just my teachers but also the students and friends and, um, neighbors, things like that.
1:00:13
In a variety of ways, some gentler than others, but all of them were very, very impactful for me,and I think I pushed back against most of them for all four years of high school, and then when I went to undergrad, the kind of thing where I didn’t necessarily have to listen to my professors, I didn’t have to listen to my classmates, I didn’t need necessarily to be challenged, but I was voracious for information about anything, and living on my own in undergrad it was, I don’t know why, I don’t know what pushed me to do this, but, um, I definitely think a lot of the foundation for the questions that I had were set in high school, ‘cause when I got to undergrad there was a lot that I finally did research, like um, I looked more into feminism, I looked more into, um, the history of slavery and racism in American, I looked more into, uh, LGBTQ+, um, movements throughout the US and throughout the world and that kind of thing. And I became very, very, very left, still am pretty left. I think I’ve sort of dialed it more in, um, I’m hoping it’s not necessarily an oscillating pendulum but more just, uh, trying to land my needle on what’s accurate, um, and so, um, because more progressive, became more left, uh, and I think a part of that is why, um, when my mom and dad got divorced, and I was trying to talk to my dad and be like, “You know you can’t find– you can’t just like stalk her using Find My iPhone, you can’t do this, like, this is not helpful, it’s not productive, it’s not healthy.” He, I think, when all this was going on burrowed further into kind of politics, his political ideas, which were very antithetical to my own. And so even though I had been like daddy’s little girl for twenty something plus years, um, I realized that I couldn’t necessarily stomach the stuff he was saying about women, about Black people, about, um, trans people, still to this day, I can’t, uh– and my thing is like, you know, you can say ignorant shit, and if it’s coming from a good place it’s not going to phase me. As long as you’re not a bully, the words that you use, the language, the terminology that you use doesn’t matter to me so much as that you are coming from a good place, a place of, like, wanting to understand and wanting to be kind. And my dad is not necessarily like that. He is very set in his beliefs and his beliefs unfortunately seem founded on bigotry, and, in general, I’m not gonna say hatred, hatred is such a strong word, but it’s not kindness. And so, um, my dad and I have been estranged for years now and that’s a big part of the reason why. Um, he doesn’t know much about me or how I identify anymore, um, and I think more importantly– and most importantly he will not have anything to do with my kids, ‘cause who knows? One of these days I may have a child who grows up and decides that their gender is not the one they were assigned at birth, and that’s fine with me, but I’m not going to willingly subject them to somebody who won’t keep it to themselves, who’s going to be a bully about it. That’s not the kind of parent I want to be, that’s not the kind of person I want to be. So yeah.
01:04:57
He was important to me, he was formative growing up, but we don’t really have anything to do with each other anymore. I’m not even sure where he lives. I think he’s somewhere in Colorado. Um, but I guess on the topic of having kids, it is something that I’ve wanted to do, um, it’s something that I didn’t think was necessarily in reach when I was going through the lowest parts of my depression, ‘cause I think it's pretty typical at that part to feel like, you know, I can barely take care of myself, how am I ever going to take care of another person. Um, and to an extent, I kind of like, with depression, one hundred percent, full stop, don’t have kids. Like, don’t have a kid if you are in the full throes of it and you don’t have support and you aren’t getting treated, like, don’t, that’s a bad time for everybody, right? Not to tell anybody what to do, just because you’re depressed doesn’t mean you can’t have kids. But I understand the sentiment that says, “I can’t have kids ‘cause I’m this depressed.” Um, but like being able to not necessarily garden myself out of depression, ‘cause that’s not really what it was, but being able to make lifestyle changes, and being flexible enough and have the opportunity to make changes that reduce a lot of the burdens that make you depressed for me, anyway, like the depression is still very much there, but it’s just something that I can manage as long as I have, um, certain things in place. Like a partner who is willing to help me take care of the house and who cooks me breakfast and dinner is very helpful, ‘cause otherwise I just won’t eat properly. And when I don’t eat properly, I get worse. Um, some days are still bad, like I took today off of work because I just couldn’t get out of bed, but on the topic of having kids, it was something that I’ve known that I always wanted to do, um, even if it was at times in my life, something that I thought I couldn’t do responsibly, and being an adult who wants to have kids, and wants to have romantic relationships, and lives in a country where one of the only– one of the two dominant political parties is trying their damndest to take away birth control and, um, access to abortion and things like that for fifty one percent of the population is frustrating because it means that I either have kids on their timeline, which means I may be struggling to survive, struggling to provide for myself as well as somebody else, who did not ask to be born, who did not ask to be put into this situation that I was in, or having kids on my timeline when I feel emotionally, physically, and financially capable, and have a partner that I can trust is going to be there when I can’t. Um, having kids on my timeline is very important to me, and I think most people would agree with that, nobody wants a kid just suddenly in their lives that they weren’t planning for or can’t hope to provide for. Um, so– and that leads me to I guess, um, to you really. Um, because when all of this anti-abortion legislation was getting passed in the US because Roe v. Wade was overturned, um, it kind of terrified me. I had been– I had been worried since 2016, um, when everybody was like, “Oh Trump will never get elected, blah, blah, blah, and even if he gets elected, nothing’s going to happen, and, you know, even if Roe v. Wade gets overturned, this isn’t going to happen,” and then all of those dominoes just keep falling.
01:09:50
I was worried in 2016 that America was going to go in the direction that it has, and I had been making plans in undergrad, I was just like, you know, I’m going to finish up my undergrad and then what? Like, I might not want to stay in the United States, it may not be a place that is, um, conducive to me having a family, having a community, and so that’s when I decided to go to grad school and get my PhD so that I would be more attractive to other countries in case I wanted to move away. Um, and still sort of working on that, still contemplating moving somewhere else in the US or somewhere else outside the US. But in the meantime, uh, I wanted to have the security that came with knowing that I can have kids on my own timeline, that I will be able to get and seek an abortion if I need one. Um, because my fear is that I’m going to have a kid when I’m not ready for it, and I’m not going to be able to be the sort of parent that I want to be or the parent that they deserve. Um, my mom was kick ass, and my aunt was awesome, and my dad was my best friend, and even though, you know, two out of three of those party did their best, um, growing up was still really hard. So you can be as prepared as you want as a parent and still fail. But I don’t want my failures to be because I didn’t do my best. And doing my best for me, looks like planning and building a life around a decision that I know I’m going to want to have, so that when I make that decision, when I have a kid, I will be in a place with a community who is going to be healthy and happy, uh, that we can rely on for either ingredients, or picking up each other’s kids from school, or joining a book club, or stepping in when I’m about to pull out my hair. Um, things like that. Having a partner who is going to be a partner, and help me raise a kid, and help me manage a household, and not just pick one aspect of life and be like, “That’s the one I’m going to focus on, you deal with all the rest,” is really important to me.
Um, and so um, when all of this like anti-abortion legislation was kind of coming out, I had the fortune of seeing a link or something online that was basically like, “Hey so all this is happening, you might want to think about getting this,” um, I think it was like Pro Access is what it is, or Access Aid, Aid Access, I forget what it’s called. Yeah, um, is it Aid Access? Okay, yeah. That’s what it is. Uh, you might want to think about getting abortifacient from them, you can just sit for a couple years, you don’t have to use it, you can have it as a just in case, um, but it might be a good thing to have with all this anti-abortion legislation kinda coming down the pipeline. And I was like, “Yeah that does sound like a good thing to have.” And so I ordered it, I paid for it, I got a prescription and I got it in the mail, and now it just sits in my apartment. I know where it is in case I ever need it, and, um, at this point in my life I don’t think I will need it, um, but the comfort of knowing that it’s there and knowing that I have a choice of not if to have a kid, but when to have a kid is really, really important to me and it is very reassuring. I don’t think I could live– I– I– I don’t think I would’ve moved in with my boyfriend, I don’t think we would’ve moved in together if I did not have that there, even though he and I have discussed what would happen if I were to get pregnant. Would we try and make this work? Like, our relationship is still very new, even though we’ve moved in together, um, and so being able to focus on our relationship and not have the dread of “what if” hanging over me, clouding that up while we’re trying to figure things out between us is– is a lifesaver. It’s a relationship saver. But yeah. Um, I was talking to a friend the other day, I don’t even remember who I was telling, oh, oh I was in a group chat with some friends, uh, we were playing a video game together, and somebody was saying something about, um, we were talking about, like, abortion legislation in the US, it was me and two other women and like four guys just kind of like in the background just sort of listening, ‘cause we were– we had taken off on our own conversation, and they were– it was just a back and forth kind of thing. So now it was their turn to listen. So we were talking about it and one of them said something about, you know, abortion and I chimed in with, um, the statistical fact, I believe, that women who have had an abortion tend to have more kids in life than women who have not had an abortion, and the reasoning for that is the same reasoning sort of I gave is like I don’t want to have a kid when I’m not ready for it and have to scrimp and survive to provide for me and the kid. I’d rather be in a place where I can be financially and emotionally responsible and be able to have a couple of kids or three kids.
01:15:48
Like. I don’t want to have just one, I want at least two, me and my brother were best friends and my sister is awesome, and even though we weren’t necessarily as close, um, I kind of think having kids in pairs is the way to go. I don’t think I want to sign up for four kids though, two to three for me. Um, but if I weren’t able to plan on having a kid, then I would just probably have the one. So, we talked about that for a bit, she was curious about, um, the statement that I had made as well and asked me to explain it, so that was the explanation that I gave. Um, but yeah. I’m sort of at a loss of where to go here.
Um, [Redacted], why did you want to share your story?
I wanted to share my story because I think there is a misconception about the type of people who seek an abortion. Um, people tend to think of it as people who are like, well, I hear a lot from people who are like, “You shouldn’t use abortion as birth control.” And one, nobody does that abortions are fucking expensive. Two, even if they were using abortion as birth control instead of, like, preventing birth right, or preventing pregnancy, why does it matter to you? I understand people think that, um, abortion is killing, you know, a life, um, but it’s not. Like the vast, vast, vast majority of abortions happen when it’s– there is nothing there but a tiny, little clump of cells that you can’t even see. There indistinguishable from a miscarriage, um, and any abortions that happen after that fact when it’s not just a tiny, little clump of cells is a child that was very much wanted and will be mourned but was not viable or compatible with life, I think is the term that– the phrase that gets used. Um, either there’s some sort of defect or there’s a danger to, uh, the baby and the mother, um, and so I guess I’m sharing my story really to kind of give people an idea of who seeks an abortion. Um, it’s like one in four women will or something like that, so there are a lot more people out there I think that are very similar to each other, very similar to people who don’t believe in abortions than they are the rogue promiscuous woman who is set on living life as selfishly and without consequence as they seem to think people who seek abortions do. So, if I can be, I guess, you know the Master’s student, the cyber security researcher that somebody thinks of when they think of a faceless woman seeking an abortion, and it gets them to pause and reevaluate maybe their misconceptions about abortions or who seeks an abortion, then I’m happy to be that woman. I didn’t really have anything else to add, I guess.
01:20:00.87
Is abortion something you can talk about with your family?
Um, I think it’s something I can talk about with my mom for sure. I could probably talk about it with my stepdad, um, I don’t know that I would, but, um, not because I think that he’s, um, judgmental or against it or anything like that, I just don’t know that we have that sort of relationship. But, um, I could talk about, I could talk about it if I needed it with my mom for sure. My mom, I don’t– I think she has trouble talking about her own experiences, I don’t necessarily know if she has ever gotten an abortion or if they were miscarriages, um, I’ve heard conflicting stories from different people, so I think for her it is still kind of a, uh, a taboo subject even though I can talk about it with her and I know there won’t be any judgment, and she’ll be supportive and help me do whatever I need to do. For herself, she doesn’t feel like she can talk about it and that’s probably just the way she was raised, the way she was socialized, just like the way I was raised, the way I was socialized, um, I feel like I’ve tread around the topic of having kids and having an abortion this whole time until basically the end, um, I could talk about it with my brother and my sister. Uh, and I think there would be questions out of curiosity, but not out of judgment at all or out of, um, like, chastisement even. Just be like, you know, “Oh what are you gonna do? Okay, do you need somebody with you? Well how did that go,” kind of things, “How do you feel about it,” etc. I definitely think I could talk about it with my family. I don’t know that I would talk about it with my family in Israel, just ‘cause like I said, um, it’s– it’s rare that I talk with any of them one on one. [Redacted] I could talk about it, I don’t actually know what [Redacted] would say, she’d probably not really care, she would care that I’m telling her, but she’d just be like, “Yeah, okay, it’s an abortion, who cares?” Um, but, uh, as far as like friends go, I wonder, I could probably tell my ex, [Redacted], that I’m still good friends with whose dress shoes I still own, um, about anything like that that I had, or of course my current partner I could talk to him about it. Um, there are a couple of friends that I think I would tell if only to, uh, have support during that time just kind of like think out my decision. Um, but as far as like if I would tell them, I probably wouldn’t like shout it from the rooftops or tell a bunch of people, it might be just like one or two close people and then, um, the person who, like, my partner at that time. But I’m fortunate in that my family is pretty progressive, um, and that I’ve surrounded myself with people who are also similarly minded, um, there are a couple people in my life who identify as pro-life, but they are– they– they identify as pro-life for some reason even though they’re pro-choice, they’re like, “For myself, I would not get an abortion, but I’m not going to stop anybody else from seeking one and I support that they have that decision to make, but I just for me, it’s not the right decision.” So even though they identify as pro-ife, they’re pro-choice because I guess pro-choice carries with it a stigma and pro-life does sound like such a nice thing to be, doesn’t it? But it’s all language. I guess those– those terms were coined for the specific reason of people wanting to be pro-life, ‘cause if you’re not pro-life, the implication is that you’re pro-death, right? But that’s not what it is at all. It’s, at least in my case, having the ability to choose when I have kids is pro-life. It’s pro- my life, it’s pro- my future children’s lives versus maybe my life, maybe another life, an unexpected one. Not to say that I wouldn’t do my best, but I can’t promise I wouldn’t be full of resentment (laughter). Um, I think abortion is still one of those things, it’s very much taboo to talk about in the US, where are the twenty-five percent of women who have had an abortion during all this? A lot of them are speaking out, a lot of them are talking to their friends and family, are talking to their politicians and their legislatures, that is something I don’t think I could ever do. That’s so brave to me, like, going up there and chastising a bunch of people for doing something stupid when you’ve needed to rely on that resource on the ability to have an abortion for whatever reason, either you weren’t in a good place of your life at the time, or you made you know, you had a drunken hook up and you’re like, “Oh shit, I’m pregnant, well I don’t want to be,” or you’re struggling with addiction, or you’re somebody who wanted to be a mother, but not right now. All of those choices are valid. There was a, I’m gonna make a Peaky Blinders reference. This was a quote that made me start watching the show, in fact. There’s a scene between Polly and, um, I wish I remembered her name, Aunt Polly, and basically the only other main woman on the cast who are on the Peaky Blinders’ side, and she was telling her, you know, “You know the words for the woman who’s pregnant without a man, slut, whore, whatever, but there’s no word for the man who walks away.” Um, I definitely think that’s what made us start watching the show, and I do think about it a lot whenever I hear the latest round of anti-abortion legislation coming down. It’s like, yeah, a pregnant belly is difficult to conceal, but if you sleep with a woman and get her pregnant and just, you know, fuck off, no one knows what you did. It’s an unfortunate fact of life that we treat women so poorly because of pregnancy and because of sexuality. Everybody’s kind of got it rough, but I don’t know, it may very well lead to me leaving the United States. This is my home, but my mom left her home to find a better life for her kids, so maybe that’ll be me someday. I think I rambled on past your question.
01:29:21
Uh, no [Redacted], that was great, thank you. Are there any final thoughts you want to leave with?
Um, I guess the only thought I have at the end of this is that I hope that my story and your project and other stories like this encourage people to be more patient and more permissive and kind to each other. People tend to look at their life and their perspectives and apply that to everybody else, but that’s not necessarily the case, so having the compassion to be like, “I don’t understand, but I don’t necessarily need to understand to champion your rights and to champion your happiness and your health.” I guess I just want more of that compassion in the world. But thanks for inviting me in, giving me the space to talk about this, and give my thoughts.
Uh, no, [Redacted] it’s been my absolute pleasure, thank you so much for sharing so much and being so open as you have been.
My pleasure.
I’m going to stop the recording.